In the past, wireless devices have communicated with network servers by transmitting data that traverses a wireless link from a wireless device to a base station, through a gateway, and over a wireline Wide Area Network (WAN) to a network server coupled to the WAN. Client computers on the WAN may then access the data from the network server over the WAN.
Conventionally, a wireless device packetizes the data to be transmitted and then encrypts the data packet before transmitting the data packet over a wireless link. The data packet encryption may be performed by using conventional wireless transmission systems including Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD). The CDPD wireless transmission system may employ RC4 (a well-known encryption method from RSA Data Security, Inc. of Redwood City, Calif.).
Encryption of the data packet before the data packet traverses the wireless link reduces the ability of unauthorized third parties to tamper, listen, or interfere with the transmission of the data packet over the wireless link. Indeed, encryption provides improved privacy in such wireless communications by reducing the ability of unauthorized third parties to intercept and read wireless transmissions. In particular, such encryption generally limits the ability of third-parties to intercept and listen to the transmitted data, intercept and modify the transmitted data, or to engage in a practice known in the art as “spoofing,” whereby a third party gains unauthorized access to a network.
The network server also typically encrypts the data from the received data packet before transmitting the data over the WAN to the client computer to reduce the ability of third parties to gain unauthorized access to or to spoof the data. This encryption between the network server and the client computer may include the conventional security protocol SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).
The data is not, however, conventionally encrypted as the data traverses the WAN segment between the gateway and the network server. One reason the data is not typically encrypted between the gateway and the network server is due to the high overhead associated with use of protocols such as Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS). Thus, conventionally, data packets traversing the WAN between the gateway and the network server are either not encrypted or use a high-overhead encryption method, which may require considerable bandwidth.
Accordingly, a need exists to provide an efficient system and method for improved privacy, authentication, and encryption of data transmitted from a wireless device to a network server that spans wireless and wireline networks.